Building Digital Twin Tools To Investigate Environmental Threats to Health

Virtual patients with diseases that precisely mimic real-life patients are the next frontier in medicine. Such “digital twins” would allow health researchers to drastically accelerate the development of new treatments. However, before these digital patients can be created, scientists must train computer systems. Current technology is unable to interpret the vast and inconsistent information from patients, along with the complex data.

But a new five-year, $3 million research project funded by the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences aims to create a digital dictionary and playbook to help technology replicate the way humans experience disease. The study is connected to a $1.75-million project at UF to create Florida’s Digital Twin, a digital replica of Florida that can model the effects of natural disasters and future health threats.

“This grant is important for our research team because it helps us develop new methods and ways to manage big data. It significantly enhances our ability to understand the complexity of how environmental factors affect human health,” said project director Jiang Bian, Ph.D., a professor in the UF College of Medicine’s Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics. The project’s scope is notable for integrating social determinants of health, such as education and economic status, with ecological factors, such as pollution and natural disasters.

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